Principal's News

Dear Parents, 

I hope all of our mums in our community had a wonderful Mother's Day last weekend. Thank you to Megan for organising a fabulous Mother's Day breakfast. This event has been part of our school's tradition for the last 30 years. It is an important event to acknowledge, celebrate and thank our mums for all that you do for your children, your families and our school community. 

Last term we held our Easter Fair which was a wonderful event not only for our own community but it was also a great opportunity for the wider community to come and experience what our school has to offer. The day was a fun filled event that included an Easter Egg Hunt, face painting, and the ever-popular 'Crazy hair' station, where kids showed off their wild and creative hairstyles.

A huge thank you to the amazing volunteers from the OLGC community led by Erin Boyd who dedicated their time and effort to make this event such a success.  Your hard work and commitment truly made the day unforgettable for everyone involved.  

This event was also a great opportunity to raise funds and to attract new families to our school in terms of enrolments. The figures are in and the event raised $6,300 in profit and so far in terms of enrolments we have one Year 3 and one Year 4 starting June/July 2025, one Year 1 and 11 Preps for 2026 which does not include all of our siblings. We are still receiving requests for school tours for next year and for 2027, so I expect more enrolments throughout the remainder of the year. 

This Term we started our Playgroup titled OLGC Little Learners for babies to preschool aged children. The room next to the Prep classroom has been dedicated as the Playgroup space and one of our Learning Support Officers, Sonia Skliros is our Playgroup Coordinator. Sonia is passionate about early childhood education and has prior experience running a playgroup. 

Having a playgroup is a great way for new families to experience our school and as a marketing strategy to build future enrolments. We have only been operating for three weeks but we have had two new families attend with one resulting in an enrolment for Prep 2026. If you know anyone who may be interested please spread the word. Also, if you have a connection with a local kinder, child care centre or maternal health centre please collect a flyer from the office. Younger siblings are also welcome to attend. 

As you are aware, at the recent Federal Election our school was rented as a polling centre. This was a wonderful opportunity to raise funds for our school not only through the rental but also with a sausage sizzle.  Thank you to those parents who volunteered their time to organise and run the sausage sizzle. The sausage sizzle raised $1,588 and the rental income was $462 totalling $2,050 in profit.

From a student learning perspective, we have been focused on improving our teaching practice across our school with ongoing professional learning. A number of our teachers and leaders have been involved in Teach Well which is supporting the Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools (MACS) to bring the Vision for Instruction to life in its classrooms across the Melbourne region. This professional learning is a 9 month course supporting teachers and school leaders to build more high-impact instruction into their classrooms. The Masterclass Series works from a robust research and evidence base with concrete

techniques educators can use immediately.

In our Junior School, we have adopted a phonics based approach which fits well with MACS' Vision for Instruction and invested in Little Learners Love Literacy (LLLL) resources and professional learning workshops. LLLL supports explicit and systematic teaching of reading and spelling. Children learn at a quicker rate if they are taught systematically and explicitly using a synthetic phonics and a structured literacy approach. They know what they are learning and can verbalise it.

To teach explicitly, skills and knowledge are broken down into their component parts and they are taught directly in a systematic, logical sequence – from simple to complex. Teaching is mostly whole class following an “I do, we do, you do” structure: I do - teacher instructs and provides a model. We do - guided practice supported by the teacher. You do - the learner practises/applies new content independently – moving towards mastery. 

Further information about these approaches and our success in improving student outcomes will be shared as we embed these across our school. 

Kind regards

Robyn Thomson

Principal